It's a rags to riches story. Pure show biz. The yarn with all the classic elements. The funny, sometimes heart-breaking musical biography of Peter Allen, a compulsive showman, a quintessentially 1970s figure.
   He was also an Oscar-winning songwriter, whose work, as described by music critic Stephen Holden, "conjures a Manhattan skyline fantasy of sophistication and romance more readily than that of any other songwriter of his generation. One might describe him as the pop music equivalent of a dry Manhattan with a twist of bitters."
   The particular twist to this story being that Peter Allen was a boy from the Aussie bush, from very humble means and with tragedy in his background. Nonetheless, and perhaps even because of all this, Peter Allen went on to become a high kicking balladeer, throwing bolts of lightning from the stage of Radio City Music Hall.
   Following my book and TV documentary, Peter Allen turned out to be the stuff of legend. His songs and story first emerged as the basis of a stage musical, which subsequently became The Boy From Oz and premiered in Sydney on March 5, 1998.
   Given that Australian audiences had existed for decades on a steady diet of imported, pre-tested, certified Broadway hits, The Boy From Oz was unusual. It didn't come from an existing tradition of home-grown Australian musicals. Nevertheless, it was a hit, running for two years, despite Australia's small population, and becoming what theatrical managers on the other side of the globe would term a 'local rumble.'
   Local rumbles, however, mean little to decision - makers on Broadway. In truth, Peter Allen had been all but forgotten by a new generation or was otherwise remembered for flopping royally in his 1988 musical Legs Diamond.
   Given this reality, there would be no easy, instant route to Broadway for The Boy From Oz. But the producers, Ben Gannon and Robert Fox, were determined to get it there.
   Enter Hugh Jackman - the newly-minted movie star from Australia who had made his name playing Wolverine in the X-Men films and was known to mass audiences as an action star. Smaller numbers, however, also knew Hugh Jackman as a born song and dance man and a thoroughbred at that - a prince of the blood. Prior to The Boy From Oz, theater audiences remembered Hugh Jackman from the Australian production of Sunset Boulevard, from the hit London revival of Oklahoma!, and from his memorable concert turn belting the score of Carousel at New York's Carnegie Hall.
   As it happened, Jackman had been approached to play Peter Allen several years earlier when The Boy From Oz was first being developed. At that point, however, the actor-entertainer had other commitments. About to start his Hollywood roll, Jackman felt the song and dance man part of the image might confuse the issue.
   Then he saw The Boy From Oz in Sydney: he found himself impressed, particularly with the fact that, as Hugh Jackman himself puts it, "Throughout his career, Peter Allen took risks." At intermission, pondering the prospect of perhaps taking a risk himself, he realized that he wanted to be up there doing it himself.
   Come the Broadway opening October 16, 2003, Hugh Jackman was indeed up there doing it.
   With that, The Boy From Oz became the first Australian musical to make it to Broadway. In the process, it gave Peter Allen the posthumous theatrical glory and recognition he had always yearned for and deserved. Hugh Jackman as Peter Allen? One can only presume that Peter Allen himself would have been delighted.